Running With Scissors

  I’d never felt so trapped in my entire life. And I did it to myself. I had made myself a prisoner, unable to walk on that side of the street ever again, go into that store.

  I sat on the couch in the dark. Then I got up and went into the kitchen for my cigarettes and came back. I lit one and stared at the shadows of the African masks on my mother’s walls, her pen-and-ink drawings behind glass frames, the shelves and shelves of books.

  The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.

  PENNIES FROM HEAVEN

  I

  T WAS THE SUMMER THAT PRINCE CHARLES MARRIED LADY Diana Spencer and nobody could look at the television without thinking about Natalie.

  “Jeez, you look just like her, Natalie, you really do,” Agnes said as she sat back on the sofa rubbing her feet together at the bunions.

  “Oh, yeah, right.” Natalie lit a Marlboro Light.

  “It’s true, Nat. Maybe you should ask Kate to cut your hair like hers,” Hope said.

  “What’s the matter with you people? I am not Princess fucking Diana. We look nothing alike.” Actually, they did.

  Princess Diana was almost like a parallel-universe version of Natalie. A version that didn’t give her first blowjob at eleven, wasn’t traded for cash by her father at thirteen and didn’t long for a job as a counter girl at McDonald’s.

  “It’s in the eyes,” I said. “You have the same eyes. And there’s something about your face that’s a lot like hers,” I said.

  Natalie turned to me. “You think?”

  “Yeah.”

  She punched me on the shoulder and smiled. “You’re such a liar.”

  “No, it’s true. You really do look alike.”

  She stood up and raised her chin in the air. “I am Princess Natalie Finch and you shall all kiss my royal ass.” “Oh, sit down,” Agnes said. “Don’t get all high and mighty on us now. There’s one thing that Diana girl has that you don’t and that’s a figure.” “Oh, Agnes, that’s not nice,” Hope said.

  Natalie sat on the arm of the wing chair. “Are you saying I’m a fat cow?”

  Agnes turned away and looked back at the TV. “I didn’t call you a fat cow. You’re just a bigger girl than that Diana.” “Well, I take after you,” Natalie said.

  Agnes shrugged and rubbed her toes together. “I’m no spring chicken, but when I was your age I had a very good figure. As a matter of fact, when your father and I first—” “I can’t believe you,” Natalie said, smirking. “I can’t believe you’re calling your own daughter fat.” “I’m not calling you fat. I’m just saying that when I met your father—”

  “Oh shut up, Agnes. Nobody wants to hear another one of your stories,” Hope said.

  “Don’t tell me to shut up. I have every right to talk. I have every right—”

  “Hope’s right. We don’t want to hear you ramble on and on.” “Fine,” Agnes said.

  Natalie crushed her cigarette out in the ashtray that was sitting on the chair. “So tell me more about how fat and disgusting I am.” Agnes pretended she didn’t hear. She stared straight ahead as NBC replayed highlights of the wedding. “What a beautiful dress.” “So you’re disgusted by your piggy daughter. You don’t approve?” Natalie taunted.

  Agnes said, “And that’s a lovely tiara.”

  Natalie got up off the chair and went over to the TV. With her big toe, she punched it off.

  “Natalie!”

  “What, Agnes?”

  “Turn that television set back on. I was watching.”

  Natalie cocked her head to the side and placed her hands on her hips. “No. Tell me more about how I disgust you.” “Leave her alone, Nat,” Hope said, shifting uncomfortably on the other end of the sofa.

  “You stay out of this,” Natalie ordered.

  “Fine, I will,” said Hope. She picked up her white bible and began thumbing through the pages.

  Seeing this, Natalie said, “What are you doing, Hope? Asking God if I’m a fat cow?” Hope closed the bible and squared it on her lap. “Look, don’t drag me into this, Natalie. I’m not the one who called you fat. This is between you and Agnes.” “So then, little Miss Biblethumper, stay the fuck out of it.”

  “Don’t talk to your sister like that,” Agnes scolded, still watching the TV even though it was off.

  Natalie shifted her weight onto one leg. She glanced over at me and rolled her eyes.

  I rolled my eyes back. “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Yes,” Agnes said. “Why don’t you two go to McDonald’s.”

  “You fucking bitch,” Natalie said.

  “That’s enough, Natalie,” Hope said.

  Natalie stomped over to Agnes and snatched her purse. “Fine, we’ll go to McDonald’s.” “Now you put that down.” Agnes grabbed the corner of her bag but Natalie pulled it away. “Give me that back, Natalie. That’s mine.” “You said go to McDonald’s, so we’re going to go to McDonald’s.” Natalie reached into the purse, pulling out Agnes’s wallet. She tossed the purse back on the couch and the contents spilled onto the cushions. “All you have is a twenty?” Natalie said. “Fine, then I guess that’s all we’ll take.” She took the twenty and tucked it into the hip pocket on her jeans.

  Agnes shouted, “Natalie, I need that money. You have no right to take that. I’m going to speak to the doctor about this.” Natalie stood in the doorway, ready to leave. “Fine, you talk to the doctor all you want.” Then she looked at me. “Well?” I got up from the sofa and followed her out of the room.

  Upstairs in her room, Natalie stood in front of her fulllength mirror. She pulled her shirt up just below her breasts. “I am a pig,” she said, clutching her flesh in her hand.

  “No you’re not,” I told her. “You’re not fat.”

  She turned her back to the mirror and stretched her head around. “God, look at my ass. It’s huge.” “Natalie, knock it off. You look fine. You’re very pretty.”

  “Fuck it,” she said. “Let’s go get Big Macs.”

  We went to McDonald’s and gorged ourselves on Big Macs and extra-large fries. After she sucked down the last of her milkshake, Natalie burped and said, “We only have forty cents left.” I checked my Timex. It was only two in the afternoon. We would not survive the day without additional funds. “Who can we ask for money?” Natalie wiped her mouth on the back of her hand. “Your mother?”

  “We could try,” I said. “But I think all she’ll do is get hysterical about my father not giving her enough child support.” Natalie chewed on the straw and went deep into thought.

  I stared out the window at the cars in the parking lot. Why was everybody driving brown cars? Why not black or white or gray? Even red. But brown?

  “Okay, I know what we can do,” Natalie said.

  “What?”

  “Let’s go to Amherst and hit Kimmel up.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I said. It was such a good idea. Like finding a ten-dollar bill in the pocket of your jeans. Kimmel might give us money. He was the doctor’s “spiritual brother” and also a Catholic priest, the head of his own church in Amherst.

  We walked to the bus stop in front of Thome’s Market and smoked until the bus came. We sat in the back, slumped down with our knees on the seat in front of us. “You think he’ll give us anything?” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Natalie said. “He’ll cough something up.”

  When we arrived at the church, we were able to walk straight into Father Kimmel’s office. It was surprising that there were no guards or even a secretary to protect a priest. It seemed like anybody could just go right up and touch one.

  “Well, hello,” he said from behind his desk. Sunlight glinted off his silver glasses. He motioned us into his office.

  Natalie and I sat in the two chairs in front of his desk. Natalie reached for the crystal Jesus paperweight on his desk.

  “That’s fragile, dear,” Father Kimmel said the instant Natalie’s fingers touched it
.

  “Oops, sorry,” she said. Then she sniffed her fingers. “We just went to McDonald’s. Wouldn’t want to get any french fry grease on Jesus.” Father Kimmel smiled and cleared his throat. “Well then, so,” he said. “What is the reason for this delightful surprise today?” Natalie pointed to the cross behind Father Kimmel’s head. “Is that real gold?”

  He was stiff with age and it wasn’t easy for him to turn. “What’s that?” he said, staring straight ahead at us, smiling.

  “The cross. Behind you. Is it gold?”

  Father Kimmel clasped his hands on top of his desk. “No, I think that’s probably just brass. We wouldn’t keep gold here. You know, because of the students down at the university.” “Oh,” Natalie said.

  I smiled at Father Kimmel and thought about the first time I visited him. I was maybe eleven and with my mother and Dr. Finch and we were upstairs in his private apartment in the rectory next door. The three of them went into the bedroom to discuss something, so I was alone in the living room. Because it was there, I opened his desk drawer. And that’s where I saw my first copy of Hustler magazine.

  “We need some money,” Natalie said. “Can you help?”

  Again, Father Kimmel cleared his throat. He looked uncomfortable, like we’d just asked him to defend some church policy on abortion. “Ah, well, um,” he stammered, “how much money do you need?” “Whatever,” Natalie said. “Enough for a movie.”

  He was visibly relieved and he smiled. “Oh, well, of course. A movie, I think we can manage that.” “And popcorn,” Natalie added.

  Father Kimmel reached across to his file cabinet and grabbed the handle of the tithing basket. He poked through the money dish, extracting dollar bills.

  Natalie slid her eyes to me and grinned. See? she mouthed.

  I smiled back.

  “How is fifteen dollars?” Father Kimmel said, offering us a stack of fifteen crumpled one-dollar bills.

  “Can you make it twenty-five?”

  He sighed. “Let me see here,” he said as he routed around through the dish. “Some of it’ll have to be in quarters,” he said.

  “That’s fine.” When he wasn’t looking, Natalie stuck her finger on the crystal Jesus head, leaving a smudge.

  “Okay, then. Twenty-five dollars with two dollars in quarters.” He poured the money into Natalie’s hands.

  And then he asked, “Is everything alright at home?”

  “Yeah,” Natalie shrugged. “Same as always. Anyway, we gotta go.” She stood.

  Father Kimmel rose from his seat. He extended his hand to me. “It’s good to see you, Augusten. You’re a fine young man.” “Thanks,” I said.

  “And you, dear,” he said to Natalie, pursing his lips.

  She leaned in so that he could kiss her cheek.

  She tucked the money into her pocket and we headed for the door. As we were leaving, Father Kimmel said, “Give my best to your father, Natalie.” “I will,” she said.

  Once we were outside, we burst into a fit of laughter. “He’s such a crooked old man,” Natalie cried. “Can you believe him? Giving us money from the tithing tray so we can see a movie.” “I can’t believe he’s a priest,” I said.

  “All those poor people, forking over their precious quarters to God. Just so we can go see On Golden Pond.” “Oh my God,” I said. “Is that out yet?”

  “Yeah,” Natalie said. “I think today.”

  “We have to go.”

  We attempted to hitch a ride to the Mountain Farms Mall in Hadley but nobody would pick us up so we ended up walking. Along the way Natalie said, “I think I caught him looking at my tits.” I said, “Really? Are you serious?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But that’s okay. As long as we get to see a movie out of it.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I know what you mean.”

  OH, CHRISTMAS TREE

  N

  ATALIE AND I ARE IN THE MANGY TV ROOM WATCHING The Love Boat. We’ve dragged the wing chairs up on either side of the Christmas tree and are reaching over to pick through its branches in pursuit of any candy canes that remain. Most of them have already been eaten. By accident, Natalie stuck a plastic one in her mouth. Why Agnes insists on mixing plastic candy canes in with the real ones is beyond both of us.

  I should mention that it’s May.

  Most of the needles have fallen off the tree and are now carpeting the floor and have been tracked throughout the house. Everyone has brown, sharp little needles in their beds. The branches are dry and crispy and tend to snap off when you tug at them.

  I absently pull at a branch until it snaps. Julie, the cruise director, suggests to a clinically depressed passenger that the aft deck is a fine place to meet new people, recover from a failed love affair, and I let the branch fall on the floor with the others.

  Our lives are one endless stretch of misery punctuated by processed fast foods and the occasional crisis or amusing curiosity.

  The fact that the Christmas tree is still standing five months after Christmas is extremely disturbing to everyone in the house. But we all feel someone else should be the one to remove it. It is somebody else’s responsibility. And in most everyone’s mind, that somebody is Agnes.

  But Agnes has refused to remove the tree. “I’m not your slave,” she has screamed again and again. She will straighten her Virgin Mary candles on the sideboard, sweep the carpets, wash the occasional pot, but she will not touch this tree.

  “Personally, I don’t give a fuck if this tree stays here forever. I’m used to it now,” Natalie states as she stares straight ahead at the TV. “I hope it does stay up forever. It’ll teach Agnes a lesson.”

  I don’t really care if it stays up forever, either. It fits perfectly with the rest of the house. It’s kind of like dust. There seems to be a certain amount of dust that will collect on the surface of things and then no more. The house is already such a hodgepodge of strangeness that the tree is not out of place.

  Besides, I have experience with a misplaced Christmas tree in my past.

  *

  I was ten and all winter my mother and father had been screaming at each other. My brother had moved out of the house to live with members of his rock band, so I was trapped alone with my parents. There was a Christmas calendar on the refrigerator, the kind with little doors that you open one day at a time until the big day, December twenty-fifth. I would sit on the floor in front of the refrigerator opening the doors and wishing I could crawl inside one of those warm, glittering rooms.

  “You goddamn son of a bitch,” my mother screamed at the top of her lungs. “You want me to be your damn mother? Well I am not your damn mother. You are in love with that woman, you sick bastard.”

  “Jesus Christ, Deirdre. Would you please calm down. You’re hysterical.”

  “I most certainly am not hysterical,” my mother screamed, utterly hysterical.

  It went on like this all winter. Snow piled on the deck railings outside and the house grew darker as the bows of the pine trees leaned against the windows, heavy with snow.

  My father spent as much time as he could downstairs in their bedroom drinking. And my mother channeled her energy into a manic holiday frenzy.

  She played one song on one album again and again: “We Need a Little Christmas” from Mame. When the song would end, my mother would set down the bowl of cranberries she was threading for the tree and place the needle back at the beginning.

  She set red and green candles out on the teak dining table, and placed the Norwegian nutcracker in the center of a bowl of pecans from her father’s orchard in Georgia. She dragged her Singer sewing machine out of the basement and began making Christmas stockings, angels and reindeer ornaments for the tree.

  When I suggested cookies, she baked fourteen batches.

  She read me Christmas stories, sketched a Christmas card with pen and ink and had it printed to send to family and friends, and she even let the dog sleep on the sofa during the day.

  Her sudden and feveris
h intensity of cheer transferred onto me. And I became obsessed with decorating my room in the spirit of Christmas. Specifically, I wanted my room to look like one of the displays at the mall. While my mother was tasteful and restrained, I filled my room with multiple strands of cheap blinking lights. They hung from the ceiling and dripped from my window and walls. I wrapped thick ropes of gaudy silver garland around my desk lamp, my bookshelf and around my mirror. I spent my allowance on two blinking stars that I hung on either side of my closet door. It was as if I had become infected with a virus of bad taste.

  My mother insisted on the largest tree we could find at the Christmas tree farm. It had to be removed from the ground with a chain saw and then carried to the car by two burly men. When they roped it to the top of the Aspen, the car sank.

  At home, the tree nearly reached the top of our seventeen-foot ceiling. And it was nearly as wide as the sofa.

  My mother had it completely decorated in a matter of hours. There were balls nestled deep in the branches, silver bells placed above gold ribbons. It had everything, including popcorn and cranberry garlands she had hand-strung while watching The Jeffersons.

  “Isn’t this festive?” she asked, sweating profusely.

  I nodded.

  “We’re going to make this a special Christmas. Even if your goddamn sonofabitch father can’t bring himself to do anything but raise a glass to his lips.”

  She began to sing along with Angela Lansbury’s warbling about dragging out the holly and throwing up the tree before my mood crashes and I want to kill myself, or however it went.

  Two days before Christmas my brother came home. He was his usual, sullen self and when my mother asked him if he planned on staying for Christmas, he grunted and replied, “I don’t know.”

  I, myself, had my own doubts about the coming holiday. Although there were already dozens of presents beneath the tree, I had not noticed a single one in the shape of the gift I most wanted: Tony Orlando and Dawn’s Tie a Yellow Ribbon ’Round the Old Oak Tree. If I did not get this album, I had no reason to live. And yet there was nothing flat and square under the tree. There were plenty of puffy things—sweaters, shirts with built-in vests, the bell-bottom polyester slacks I loved, maybe a pair of platform shoes—but without that record, there might as well be no Christmas.